I hate to start a sentence this way, but I’m going to: I remember when…I produced a video for one of my high school classes, and I had to cut with scissors and Scotch-tape together the film to edit it. The “soundtrack” involved me hitting the tape recorder at the right time when the film projector started up.

Ah, the 80’s. They were the dark ages of home video.

In the end, I made a crudely edited video, shot at my school and set to The Ramones’ “Rock and Roll High School.” No dialogue or voiceover. No fade, no wipes, no YouTube.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I shot this video with a very cool Flip Video that comes with editing software. As a spokesmom for Coinstar, it was my job to show how you can use the Coinstar machine to turn coins into gift cards for free. The video was as easy to use than the Coinstar machine. In fact, I even employed several children to shoot the video for me, including my boys and my 14-year-old neighbor, Vanessa.

I’m so happy about how it came out that I’m giving away the Amazon giftcard for $90.16 that you see in the video at the Coinstar Halloween Tweet-Up on Wednesday night between 5 and 7 p.m. PST (That’s 8-10 p.m. for us East Coasters.) Coinstar is also giving away a bunch of gift cards, so Tweet-Up with us by using the #Coinstar hashtag and you could win. You can follow me @JenSinger and Coinstar @ChChing. I’ll be giving out Halloween saving tips, too and sharing Halloween war stories.

Meanwhile, here’s my new video, minus The Ramones. (For some reason, when I uploaded it to YouTube, it got a little echoey and I don’t know how to fix it. But hey, it makes “Funkytown,” which was playing in the supermarket when I was at the Coinstar machine, sound even sillier, which is a plus.)